The Amalgam
by firelordozaie
Summary: A dog with many disparate biological traits in them is known as a mutt. A ninja with many disparate biological traits in them would be an Amalgam.
1. Prologue: Sibling Rivalry

In a dark and dreary compound set beneath the earth was the cry of suffering. Physical torture is common in the ninja world, but emotional torture is what must truly be feared. Even more so when the 'torture' is but a side effect, rather than a means to an end.

Sakon and his twin brother were engaged in a battle for their very lives. As with all things they were told to do by their leader, failure meant certain death. The fact that there was never an expectation they would succeed was irrelevant. The fact that their order was something that no sane person would consider was unimportant. The fact that even by Sakon and his brother's twisted morals what they were doing was an abomination to all of life was merely a consideration that would get them killed.

"Do it." The elder of the two brothers was much calmer than the younger, having resigned himself long ago to such a fate as death. "It is the responsibility of the wise elder brother to sacrifice himself for the foolish younger brother. You will do his will, and will be that much stronger for it. I have been with you all these years, you are ready."

Sakon's fist buried itself in his brother's chest. "Do you really think I'd let your lazy ass get away with such a thing? You and I both know that this 'elder brother' shit is a farce, you just don't want to be saddled with that kind of responsibility!" Sakon laid harder into his brother's form with every word, tears forming at the edges of his vision. His blows getting weaker with every strike. "You said you'd always be there, that you'd make sure everything was fine!" the last blow barely more than a soft tap.

"If that is how you want it, foolish brother of mine... This wise elder brother shall grant you your wish!" Ukon took this opportunity to hit Sakon in the face with his full might, the cursed seal upon his forehead blaring to life. Quickly jumping into his advanced state of transformation a crimson red demon leaped into Sakon's very self. Sakon's body reacted violently to being invaded, he himself quickly jumped to a state that mirrored his brother's, before forcing himself to revert to his normal form.

After several seconds Sakon only knew pain. His entire being felt like it was bathed in a strong acid. Slowly but surely his skin began to fall away piece by piece, as his cells were slowly ripped from his body and discarded. A small bubbling of the skin began to form all over, before the various areas of moving flesh began to converge. The various bubbling masses all moved to his left arm, finally becoming one bloated entity puffing out the skin nearly an inch. Sakon could feel the whole process, as if someone were forcing highly pressurized water through his body underneath his skin.  
This feeling amplified as the skin in which the mass rested changed to a sickly blood red. Once the bubble reached a point in which it might burst it receded slowly back into the body. Sakon could feel his capillaries bursting, and a burning soreness of a bruise set in along his entire upper arm. When the bruising sensation reached its peak the lump changed color to a matching black and blue. Thusfar the pain had been something similar to what Sakon had experienced in his life, as a person who trained to fight and kill it is not unusual that he would be familiar with bruising, or the feeling of pain.

That all changed when the lump changed to white. Whereas before there was merely destruction of cells that could be mimicked by a harsh blow from a blunt object, now it was a feeling of a wound being opened, doused in the burning of alcohol, and then having salt rubbed into the wound. Then repeated over and over again several times per second. Sakon's very nerves and pain receptors were being told to experience pain, all the while his arm slowly turned into one giant abscess of disgusting misshapen flesh. Lymph and dead cells altered both its biological structure and color as the ratios of various chemicals and proteins shifted and changed through the process of being manipulated by an outside force.

After the half a minute that was more painful than even the trials he went through in acquiring his cursed seal Sakon finally thought that the worst had passed, he was beginning to become numb to the consistent pain as adrenaline flooded his system in response.

After a minute he began to laugh at how slow and long it was taking and in a fit of hysteria called out to mock his brother's pitiful attempts to eliminate him. "Is that all you have Ukon? I know you can do better than this!" There was only silence in response. The mass of disfigured flesh sunk deeper into the arm until it was almost invisible. Sakon actually began to worry that his brother had hurt himself while invading his body.

It was at this thought that his world once again became hell. Before it was merely a general feeling of pain, strong, but unspecific. More like a feeling of soreness taken to its extreme. What he as feeling before could be likened to a very wide sledgehammer. Painful and with great force, but little more than that.

The mass that now comprised the place that used to be what his tricep began to move. It shifted from its place in his arm to the end of Sakon's fingers. As it moved whatever areas it passed through warmed immensely, like an extreme fever. The increase in heat only increasing the sensitivity to the uncomfortable feeling. Eventually it rested at the knuckle to his thumb.

With a soft hissing sound and a pop, Sakon's fingernail literally exploded off of the fingernail bed. Due to the fact that he had been looking directly at his hand the nail literally flew into his face, along with a small splatter of blood. The tip of his thumb had literally been blown open, and pulped tricep muscle and fat slowly leaked out, with the pressure increasing and dropping with the beat of his heart. Each of his fingers proceeded in kind until his hand was leaking fluids from all his digits. After this the blob of destruction shifted quickly to his other arm repeating the process, and then moving down to his toes to do the same there.

While the toenails were being clipped one by one the larger mass still in Sakon's arm moved to a new location. Crawling slowly the mass of destroyed cells worked its way under his skin across his chest. As it passed atop Sakon's heart the mass quickly changed trajectory upward, following the contour of the ribcage. Eventually it made it to the collarbone, here the mass began to thin itself into a long line rather than a blob. Using this new shape it snaked its way up his neck, during this time the pressure against Sakon's throat increased, as though someone was feebly trying to choke him.

Ukon had always been fond of killing enemies via choking, or drowning. It had something to do with the elder brother's fear of not being in control. Sakon nodded his head in slight approval without a word to indicate that he approved of his brother treating him in such a manner.

Sakon resigned himself to his death as the snake of flesh began to wind itself ever longer around his neck. It was at this point that the last of his toes was finally relieved of its burden of bearing a nail. The feeling of pain throughout his body was mostly consistent at this point, a warm distant sense of being melted from the inside. He thought it probably should be painful, but the massive amounts of endorphins and adrenalin pumping through his veins as a last-ditch effort of his body to keep him alive as he entered what was probably a state of psychological shock.

"He-he." Sakon thought. "Shock is such a strange term, it evokes a sense of being related to electricity, but really it is much more like the unnatural calm of a still body of water, or of perfect silence.

Silence... Sigh Lance? What would a lance made of sighs look like?

It definitely wouldn't look like my fingers right now. Look at them just letting my life flow from them...

When I die I think I'll cut my fingers off to punish them for not doing their job of keeping my blood inside of me properly.

I wonder how long it'll take Ukon to finish this up, everything is getting boring...

And dark... Did he have one of the others start dimming the lights? That seems weird, even for him and his strange control issues." Sakon tried to blink intentionally and noticed a problem.

"Huh... I never thought I'd get to feel what it is like to have no eyelids... not blinking when you are trying to is weird. How am I supposed to make it dark with no eyelids?

Dark... Wait, darkness!

Why is it that only the left half of the room is dark? The lights all seem to be on now that I look at them...

Oh COOL! He must be in my brain!

Well, well brother dear. Point goes to you... I guess we CAN alter people's perceptions with our powers. Too bad we didn't figure it out sooner, would've been cool to see what we could've done with something awesome like that...

If you can hear me Ukon you should totally figure out something awesome to do with this!

…

…

…

Oh! You could totally use it on Tayuya! I know you totally had a crush on her, even if you'd never say it. You always had a weird masochistic streak a mile wide... Probably why you always spent your time healing me, even though it was more painful to you in the end...

I always wanted to thank you for that y'know. Taking away all my pain so that I could focus on my goals. I say my goals because I always suspected that you never really wanted any of this... life. All the ninja-ey stuff, and the 'All hail lord Orochimaru' bullshit. You were always the practical one that way.

But you still went along with it for me.

…

…

…

I know it's weird to say-, correction, to think this to you while you are tearing me apart from the inside, and killing me in the process but you really should have just left me to my whimsy and gone on to do whatever thing you actually wanted to do. Being the best older brother...

Actually. Fuck you. You are like fifty seconds older than me, where the hell do you get off calling yourself the 'older' brother, like you have actually been around longer than me. For all I know you were the egg-bubble that split from me! You are only older because you shoved me out of the way to get out of our mother first...

Bastard..."

At this point Sakon had already collapsed onto the floor, a heap of mutilated flesh and bulging pustules his thoughts becoming slowly more incoherent until even his mental chatter was reduced to an incomprehensible babble. Until finally an hour after his brother lunged into his body his conscious mind faded, and his thoughts stopped. The very last thing he thought before fading into darkness was a single phrase he would never utter anywhere his brother could hear it.

"Thanks... Ukon... no. Thank you very much! Onii-chan!"

* * *

AN: I try to keep my notes to a minimum but i'll put a little bit of info here for those who want it. I haven''t yet decided exactly where I want this to go, and as such have not decided on a main character. I have a very very vague sense of where I want the story to go, but no idea yet how I want to get there. I am going to try and keep each chapter as small as possible (my goal is to release thousand-ish word chapters on a regular basis, but given what happened to my only other ongoing fic... well we'll see).

I will use future AN space to try and explain what it was I wanted to have the reader get out of the chapter, and any improvements that get recommended may make their way in here.

This chapter is supposed to start out making you squirm in pain, as you attempt to sypathize with Sakon. Then shift into a disjointed free-flow of whimsy as his conscious slowly degrades. Finally ending with a tragic heartwarming one-liner at the very end.


	2. Interlude 1: Diagnostics and Recovery

**Ante AN: Italics in this chapter represents written words, in particular the writings in Kabuto's Medical Journal. In reality if you were to try and read them you would find yourself unable to, because they are all encoded with dozens of cyphers, but as you are the omniscient audience you get to read them with no problem (and since Kabuto is the one writing/reading it he does so with no problems).**

* * *

"He's still in a coma, though he might wake up anytime now. His case is a peculiar one, as you know." Kabuto was doing his best to look busy examining the body before him as though his machinations might actually help its condition. Thinking that the appearance of busyness might convince lord Orochimaru to leave the poor lad alone until he recovers. It wouldn't do for all the possible experiments he had planned to never come to fruition because of a lack of patience. "Based on the speed of recovery from the injuries I would say he should be back to the realm of the conscious within the month. Even for me, what happened here is out of my depth, I would dare say that your old teammate would be able to make a reasonable guess. The fact that whatever happened is causing my diagnostic techniques to all but fail is hardly comforting either. If I wasn't an experienced medic outside of the ninja arts I would have been hard pressed to figure out what even happened to him."

"Two more days. If he isn't coming around in that time-span then it will be meaningless when he finally does recover. I keep you around because you manage to work miracles. See to it that it happens this time." Orochimaru let a sneer fall upon his face as he gave his subordinate a nigh-impossible task. It was his way of demonstrating his displeasure with his most favored subordinate. Well it was his way of showing his displeasure when said subordinate was in-fact too useful to be discarded.

Kabuto resumed writing notes in his research diary.

_Second sun of the second moon, twelve years since the last great war__._

Subject has retained mental faculties, and recovered almost immediately. Preliminary medical examination showed no signs of anything wrong. Patient is stable, but unconscious.

Diagnostics show him at an unexpectedly heavy weight. He looks like he ought to weigh just under two-hundred pounds, yet he actually weighs over three hundred. This does not seem to be centered around one area of the body, and in fact even his head and individual limbs appear to weigh significantly more than expected.

My jutsu do not show any physical abnormalities internally, though he does seem to have more chakra flowing through his body than his coils should allow.

_Finally there are no apparent changes in the cursed seal. This is thankful since it was possible that problems could arise in that area._

_If he is does not awake on his own soon I will be forced to take drastic measures, though based on his present state inducing his fight or flight reflex by injecting adrenaline should suffice. Hopefully more drastic measures will be unnecessary as I am still vexed by certain aspects of his physical state._

After finishing the entry Kabuto thought a bit to make sure there weren't any other things he wished to log, he then spent several minutes transcribing his journal through several ciphers before putting the coded version on his shelf and setting the original aflame. Once he was done with this he went to bed.

* * *

Sakon/Ukon (Kabuto was unsure which of them actually survived) did not awaken despite some prodding on Kabuto's part. The med-nin simply resigned himself to prepare various methods by which to wake the boy tomorrow by force if he did not awake on his own, though not until after spending a long time looking and re-looking at the boy with his various means.

_Third sun of the Second moon, twelve years since the last great war._

Weight decreased by about 30 pounds, chakra levels have actually gone UP from before. It is currently my guess that he is somehow converting extra bodily material straight into physical energy and using that to increase his chakra. It seems remarkably similar to some notes Orochimaru has regarding the Akimichi clan from Konoha.

Also diagnostic jutsu scans indicate that every inch of his body is much more dense in material than is normal. His skin is substantially tougher and thicker, and his bones are much more dense than they were before. His muscles appear to have a substantial amount of added mass as well. I also noticed that his chakra fluctuated wildly for short periods of time, it is currently my belief that this was due to whatever is causing these changes. The fact that his bloodline is able to do so much without conscious direction is remarkable.

It was uncertain going into the experiment just what kind of a result forcing the bodies together through use of the bloodline would create. I must make a note of reminder that at all times keeping track of the subject's mental state and memory is vital.

_If I take it to be the case that somehow the dead brother's body is being broken down and integrated into the living brother's body then I should expect significant improvement soon. Doing some quick calculations based on the expected muscle-mass and bone-density of each brother before, and what I have seen so far of the physical changes I think that he will finish whatever is going on here sometime tonight. At the end of it all he will probably be down to 250 or 260 lbs, and have a substantially more robust and dense physiology in general._

_It is hard to tell what is going on with his brain. Research in that area is quite limited the world over, so predicting what even something 'simple' like adding more areas to the brain would do would be all but impossible (unlike muscle, or bone, which are fairly straightforward). Hopefully whatever changes DO happen won't leave him brain-dead. Amnesia, while a hassle, would be far preferable to his being a walking husk, or able to think, but various physical brain deformities rendering him unable to function properly. _

_Note to self. Try and locate Ukon's journals from when I was teaching him medical ninjutsu, there may be some clues as to what exactly is going on and how to deal with it._

* * *

Kabuto awoke to one of his alarms sounding, it was the one for the experiment room down the hall where he kept the 'twins'. Arriving in the room after a moment had passed he saw what had caused the disruption, the patient was up.

He stared at Kabuto for a long time, flexing his muscles and moving his limbs, all of it in the slow deliberate motions of a man not quite comfortable in his own body. Kabuto, during these 'excersizes' quickly moved various pieces of lab equipment so as to grant the boy as much room as possible. Finally taking out the IV tubes that went to both of his arms, and the various other odds and ends that helped his machinery take readings of the patient.

After several minutes of non-talking not-quite silence the twin got up and began working through a basic kata, along the way needing to readjust his movements slightly due to his newfound weight and bulk. After finishing a set he plopped himself up on a counter-top and stared at Kabuto as if waiting for him to speak.

Grinning while he took a forced medical approach to the strange scene before him Kabuto spent the next hour going from subject to subject trying to determine what the boy remembered and just 'who' he now was.

After everything was said and done, Kabuto was rather ecstatic. Not only was there minimal memory loss (there was a bunch in regards to unimportant things like names of compatriots, and parts of his personal history), and if the initial testing he put forth panned out there would be little to no loss of ability from memory problems, and a significant increase in strength, chakra control, and stamina. Really the biggest setback is the lack of ego/identity that the boy displayed. He has characteristics of both brothers present, and part of his damaged memory appears to be in relation to the areas governing understanding of "I, me, myself". He seems to think himself both Ukon and Sakon, yet at the same time more of a separate entity that merely 'was' Ukon and Sakon. When asked what he wished to called he paused, staring at me with his mouth open as if his response was on the tip of his tongue, and just froze thinking about it.

He was put on a regimen of a tightly controlled diet, and light-medium exercise. He shouldn't work with his chakra for another few days at the least.

Kabuto spent the next few minutes writing in his journal before heading off to do other important things.

_Fourth sun of the second moon, twelve years since the last great war_

_Subject awoke at approximately 0300 hours. Reason for this was not forthcoming, though evidence suggests that it was natural and as a reaction to being unconscious for so long. No unusual agents or chemicals were found at the site, on the subject's skin, in his bloodstream, or anywhere else that was looked. As such tampering appears to be a non-starter for figuring out what exactly triggered the awakening._

_Subject has regained/retained full use of motor, and other physical functions. I will be running him through the wringer in the next few days to see just "how" much use he has retained, and if there are other considerations that need be made. As predicted he lost a significant amount of weight, though previous estimated were high for what would be remaining, his current body weight is just over 220 lbs, and his physical energy spiked right when he wok up if I my instruments read correctly. His coils have been irreversibly enlarged significantly, in most normal ninja this would be a great thing, but for this experiment in particular it may prove a bane rather than a boon. _

_His memory is an intriguing thing. He appears to have retained most, if not all, of the memories of both brothers. When prompted he tends to have a hard time recalling facts about a specific day, he states that "it is as though there is more than one memory to recall there". I recall seeing something similar when dealing with certain types of information gathering techniques, more research in that area will prove prudent. Psychologically he appears quite damaged, he has a personality and manner that is distinct from each of the twins, it is as though bits and pieces of each of them came together and formed an entirely new entity. Additionally his sense of 'self' is quite the mess, he does not refer to himself as 'I', or 'me'. Rather he uses 'we' and 'us'. This leads me to suspect that rather than merging the two minds they are actually somehow kept separate, and that the actual personality is some sort of mental construct that he subconsciously created to reconcile this fact. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that he responds to both of the brothers' names, yet seems oddly perturbed each time he does so, regardless of which brother is mentioned. This suggests that his 'personality' is in-fact a separate entity from either of the twins._

_Still, the level of incorporation of memories,problems aside, is remarkable. I am rather curious as to what would happen if I were to have him take on a third person and merge it. Such an experiment can certainly wait until I have better assessed his physical capabilities, which should give me time to understand just what has happened to his brain before risking such a promising endeavor._

* * *

_Tenth Sun of the Second Moon, twelve years since the last Great War._

_Subject has made a full recovery with the aid of medical ninjutsu._

_It turns out that his memory as both Sakon and Ukon is fully intact. After borrowing some of Lord Orochimaru's notes from Root that involved his study of the Yamanaka techniques it appears that somehow the subject's mind(s?) were completely compartmentalized and this 'new' personality was created as a means to utilize them both without disastrous consequences. Though his physical brain structure has no significant changes that I have noticed, which makes just how such a thing occurred to be rather mysterious. Unfortunately because of this separation between the 'self'/personality and the individual memories, it is quite difficult for him to recall physical details about things. For instance, he could readily remember that Jirobo was 'large, and had bright hair' but could not remember his hair color or weight (though I suspect he didn't know his weight anyway)._

_It turns out that Ukon did not keep a journal for his studies and used mnemonics to remember everything. This is unfortunate, as he is currently unable to recall the specifics of what he was accomplishing. I have been able to glean that the new 'self' was not in fact a subconscious defense to reconcile the twin minds, but was in fact created by Ukon using his bloodline and medical knowledge. Yet what brain structure it is that hosts it, or how he managed such a feat are beyond his memory._

_When testing his recall he was able to demonstrate his abilities and knowledge in full, yet when faced with questions as to why things needed to be done in a particular way (something I drilled into his head during our lessons), he came up blank. It is remarkably similar to what I would expect watching a true prodigy who readily grasps and intuits what to do without ever gaining a grasp of the underlying concepts feels like. I suspect that there is some sort of 'gap' between his memories and this new 'self' that allows him to draw on the information without realizing he is doing so. If my thoughts prove true it could potentially revolutionize what is possible in regards to having spies who are unaware that they are spies, reporting without knowing why they are doing so._

_Ramblings of the implications aside, it looks like I will finally have him working with his chakra. I am especially curious as to how the bodies were incorporated together and what this means for his bloodline techniques._

* * *

_Seventeenth Sun of the Second Moon, twelve years since the last great war._

_He finally has a name now, while relearning the language (something I found readily amusing, he was speaking perfectly well, yet could not understand the rules of grammar that he was following. It was a strange sight to behold, someone so confounded by what comes so naturally to them) he came across a word that he picked up on and declared his own. Issei, all at once. Not something I would ever name a child, but I see no reason to care what he wishes to be called. _

_His (re)introduction to Lord Orochimaru was particularly humorous. Responding to Orochimaru when asked "Sakon, how are you faring?" with a petulant "Sakon is not what We are. We are Issei [all at once]." was actually rather humorous. I am grateful that our Lord is gracious enough to allow such a rebuttal from his subordinate, and was willing to laugh it off rather than killing him on the spot for his defiance._

_I am beginning to believe that even Orochimaru understands just how incredible Issei is as an experiment._

_Over the last week I began by working him through chakra exercises, and in retrospect it turns out I need not have, he apparently had been practicing Jutsu on his own (though he still has yet to grasp entirely the 'why's of its working). Because of this we moved right into trying to utilize his bloodline. _

_I really wish we had a name for their technique, whatever it is, for it is truly a wonder and a marvel. His extra bulk is actually able to be deconstructed and reformed, much like Ukon did with his body inside his brother, and can be used to create extra limbs that can pop out from anywhere. The only real downside is that it is apparently quite the chakra intensive technique, and that he must pull the mass of bones and muscle from elsewhere. Apparently Ukon foresaw such a problem and through whatever process he used redesigned this body to hold a significant amount of extra 'material' within it. _

_This would certainly explain the extra weight, and if our work and my calculations continue to go the way I predict, he should be capable of forming an entire extra set of limbs simultaneously. Honestly if I didn't know better I might have suspected that Ukon had merely hidden himself inside his brother entirely, rather than forming some new body._

* * *

_Eighteenth Sun of the Second Moon, twelve years since the last great war._

_Apparently I underestimated the capabilities of this bloodline immensely. It appears that he can actually consume living material in order to have the 'parts' necessary to form new limbs that he can sprout, and if given enough time will simply convert anything he cannot easily hold wherever he is keeping his 'excess' material into physical energy that is pumped directly into his coils._

_It appears he is also able to combine the elementary parts into himself without fear of rejection that is common in transplant patients. I have no idea what this means he is doing, as he is certainly not just melding them into himself, but it is fascinating nonetheless._

_I am going to start him on attempting to move organs from one animal to another using his power to see what happens._

* * *

**Post AN: Possible spoilers ahead. For a while I had this (and several other journal entries) as interludes between events, it was originally going to be of a kind of style where the chapter would begin with a journal entry from Kabuto, and then the actual chapter would be about what happened that caused the entry... I had this cool idea right up until I tried to make it work, and after spending about five thousand words boring myself to death with Issei (the name of Sakon/Ukon, for the time being, hehehe) basically marveling at the room and having senses and existing and everything, like a little child (his personality will be somewhat addressed in the next chapter).**

Instead I decided that I will use these (and possibly other character's personal thoughts) as a kind of expository device, letting me put in breaks to info-dump without needing clog up the story-scenes. I intend to generally have them between chapters as a pace-breaker, and I definitely like the idea of getting to read Kabuto's thoughts in a candid form this way. It also gives me an easy way to write in an explanation for 'why' our protagonist is doing whatever he is doing at the moment, and plenty of room to foreshadow future events and put in red herrings and all sorts of fun stuff!

As for random things regarding the journal, I haven't quite worked out the 'official' timeline for when things happen so it is possible that the dates in this chapter get ret-conned later on. I hope I won't need to do that, but if I do, I will. In general this is supposed to be taking place about 1.5-2.5 years before the first episode of the anime (I am under the impression that Naruto is 13 when he graduates, and his birthday is october. The war ends about a year before the Kyuubi attack (we know this because Minato becomes hokage after the war ends and was hokage just under a year before the Kyuubi attack. This means that Naruto is currently ten-ish years old (he is born sometime in year 2 after the end of the great war, and it is currently early year 12 which means he should be about ten.).

**On writing style choices, I am still unsure on how I want to do certain things (like capitalizing the word Justu, whether or not to use the Romaji name, or its translation for attacks/techniques. Whether to capitalize for titles like Hokage, Sannin, ANBU, etc. Whether I stick to just romanized versions of titles, or if I use the translated version (Sannin/Densetu no Sannin, versus The Three Legendary Ninja/The Three). If I waffle and do it one way and then another, let me know and I will just pick one to try and stick with it. If anyone has a preference and can give a good explanation why, I am more than happy to adopt a proposed method for keeping it all in line.**

**On a final note, This chapter was Originally titled "The Very Secret Diaries of Kabuto Yakushi".**


End file.
